Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the finding of a set of curious openings in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
