Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and beverages 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 revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
