Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the religion's control. A key character, who saved young Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the future of the universe. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that appear to open into different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between innocence and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
