Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell independence of thought, originality and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
