Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, Lyra's movements and her destiny are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell independence of thought, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the world's air: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict reason and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic tussle between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
