Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new 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 authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story begins with the finding of a collection of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: portals that look to open into other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
