Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
