Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such window appears to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
