Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the world's air: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
