Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in search of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book begins with the finding of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is somehow crucial – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between naivety and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
