Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to security along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such window appears to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is somehow vital – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
