Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an oppressive system which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to open into other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
