Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by some as a tradeable good, by others as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's air: gateways that look to give on to different dimensions. One such window seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
