Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the church's rule. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an controlling system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
