Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a broader conflict with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the unveiling of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
