Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal appears to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
