Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's control. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the finding of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
