Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story begins with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: portals that appear to give on to other worlds. One such window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
