Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is striving to quell freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the finding of a set of curious openings in the structure of the world's air: windows that look to open into alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict reason and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
