Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's control. A key character, who carried young the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's sky: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
