Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book starts with the discovery of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
