Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell independence of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's air: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the