Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage 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 church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to extend the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to suppress independence of thought, originality and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
