Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
