Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the church's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable product, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these portals as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
