Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the source of a social and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell independence of thought, originality and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual openings in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
