Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the original series, Lyra's actions and her destiny are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, creativity and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the discovery of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the planet's air: windows that look to lead to other worlds. One such window manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
