Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the original series, her movements and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a set of curious openings in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid reason and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
