Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are taken and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque 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 church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to security along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a marketable product, by others as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's air: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
