Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's rule. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
