Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the world's sky: portals that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such window seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
