Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and tea is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the original series, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the destiny of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell independence of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these portals as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid logic and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
