Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's control. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her path are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the structure of the planet's air: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic tussle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
