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. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the religion's control. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her path are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. One such window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
