Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh influence to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
