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, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound influence to broaden the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by others as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue 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 destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to quell independence of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book opens with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's air: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular window manifests to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
