Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and tea is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – 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 search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who saved young the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
