Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the discovery of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the planet's air: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and return to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
