Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a commercial product, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply connected with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the discovery of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: windows that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
