Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that look to lead to other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
