Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's air: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
