Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a larger conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into other worlds. One such window manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
