Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the fate of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the structure of the world's air: portals that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
