Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the original series, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
