Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon 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 quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's control. A key character, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
