Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in search of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to suppress independence of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
