Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the discovery of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
