Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that appear to lead to alternate realities. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
