Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are teeming with witches and gryphons, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between naivety and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the