Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the discovery of a series of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that appear to lead to alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
