Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: portals that look to open into alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and return to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
