Tings are falling apart 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 intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an controlling system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
