Tings are collapsing in the last installment 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. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy 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 first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that appear to lead to alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
