Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to discover more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by some as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular window manifests to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
