Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's air: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
