Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, her actions and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
