Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the institution's control. A key character, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's air: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. One such portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
