Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the church's rule. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a window appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict logic and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
