Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting 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 ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key conflict in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, innovation and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular window appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid logic and return to intuition, yet, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
