Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, her choices and her path are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her private quest to reunite with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a window appears to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict reason and return to feeling, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
