Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are ridden and tea is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh influence to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the original series, her movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's air: portals that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
