Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the original series, her actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, innovation and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's air: portals that look to open into different dimensions. A particular opening appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict logic and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
