Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress independence of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
