Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the institution's control. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the structure of the planet's air: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic tussle between naivety and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
