Tings are falling apart in the final volume 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 tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the structure of the world's air: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to instinct, yet, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
