Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid logic and back to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
