Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell independence of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the discovery of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the world's sky: windows that appear to lead to alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from strict logic and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
