Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, her actions and her path are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a larger war with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the world's air: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
