Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
