Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
