Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are caught and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – 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 youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's control. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and return to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
