Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a set of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's air: gateways that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
