Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and tea is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable good, by different parties as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
