Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a collection of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's air: portals that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a window appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
