Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing 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 shifting from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who saved young Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the original series, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a series of curious openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
