The Rose Field: Pullman's Thrilling Finale to the His Dark Materials Series

Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a larger conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The novel starts with the discovery of a set of unusual openings in the makeup of the world's air: portals that seem to open into other worlds. One such window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between innocence and experience is established.

Story Tempo and Character Development

At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the