Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her private quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling system which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
