Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who carried infant 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 sent to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a social and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict logic and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
