Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the air are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's rule. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her private quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these windows as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible rationalism and return to instinct, yet, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
