Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
