Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, her movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a broader battle with an oppressive government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
