Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in animal form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred 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 rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her path are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to alternate realities. An example of a window appears to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
