Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to security along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell freedom of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the discovery of a set of strange openings in the structure of the world's sky: windows that look to open into other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
