Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her private journey to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the unveiling of a set of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to open into alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict logic and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
