Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the source of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, her actions and her destiny are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
