Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, originality and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
