Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
