Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling system which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
