Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are taken and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress independence of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and back to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
