Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such opening appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
