Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible reason and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
