Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's rule. A key character, who saved young the heroine to security along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling system which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a series of unusual cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict reason and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
