Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to give on to alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
