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, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and tea is sipped, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to broaden the church's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. One such opening seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
