Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's air: windows that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such window appears to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
