Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription 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.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are shown to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the world's sky: portals that appear to give on to other worlds. One such opening seems to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible rationalism and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
