Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect 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 marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound authority to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, Lyra's choices and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, creativity and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
