Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The oil is regarded by some as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the finding of a set of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
