Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved young the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's air: gateways that seem to open into different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
