Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her movements and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's air: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict rationalism and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
