Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that appear to open into different dimensions. One such window appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and return to instinct, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
