Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her destiny are shown to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of strange openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to give on to other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
