Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to intuition, however, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
