Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the church's rule. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal journey to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular window appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
