Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The oil is regarded by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such window seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
