Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and recover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to feeling, however, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
