Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the source of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that seem to lead to alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between purity and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
