Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her private mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and return to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
