Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and determined main character of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's rule. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is somehow essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
