Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the air are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's rule. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, her movements and her path are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
