Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is drunk, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
