Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are ridden and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the discovery of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
