Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities always have, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, creativity and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict reason and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
