Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that seem to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible reason and return to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
