Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to extend the religion's control. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic tussle between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
