Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her private quest to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell independence of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that seem to lead to other worlds. One such opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the church's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict logic and back to instinct, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic conflict between purity and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
