Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the church's rule. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the finding of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to lead to alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
