Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to extend the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the original series, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and return to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
