Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider war with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the world's air: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
