Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, her movements and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, originality and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that look to open into other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
