Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's control. A key character, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The oil is regarded by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the structure of the world's air: gateways that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between naivety and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
