Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath 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 disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her personal journey to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the finding of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
