Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her individual mission to reconnect with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the planet's air: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
