Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the original series, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid reason and return to feeling, yet, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
