Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original 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 mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a set of curious openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that look to open into different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
