Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old 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 mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to security along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress freedom of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
