Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's control. A key character, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell freedom of reason, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the world's sky: portals that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to intuition, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
