Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the institution's dominium. A key character, who carried young Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the central conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a set of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
