Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her path are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to stifle freedom of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
