Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to extend the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to security along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the discovery of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the world's air: gateways that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict logic and back to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
