Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her private quest to reunite with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress freedom of reason, originality and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the discovery of a collection of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular window appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and back to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
