Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound power to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby 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 assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into alternate realities. One such window appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
