Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and drinks is drunk, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the makeup of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
