Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, her actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the unveiling of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to give on to other worlds. A particular window seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from strict reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
