Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to broaden the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's air: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
