Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. One such opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
