Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: portals that look to open into different dimensions. A particular window manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
