Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book opens with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to open into other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these portals as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and return to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
