Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged 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 prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears somehow to be the source of a social and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
