Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell independence of reason, originality and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's air: gateways that look to lead to alternate realities. One such window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
