Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the church's rule. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of reason, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible reason and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
