Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
