Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that look to open into other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict logic and return to feeling, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
