Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of curious cracks in the makeup of the world's air: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to intuition, yet, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
