Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh influence to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger battle with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to lead to other worlds. One such window seems to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
