Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a tradeable commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress independence of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
