Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's control. A key character, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's air: gateways that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such opening appears to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is somehow essential – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
