Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to security along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle independence of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the discovery of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the world's air: windows that look to give on to other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
