Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, her movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
