Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's control. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the original series, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the discovery of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. One such portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from strict logic and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
