Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds 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 animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to extend the religion's rule. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of reason, creativity and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that appear to open into different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
