Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, Lyra's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an controlling system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the planet's air: portals that seem to lead to alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
