Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book begins with the finding of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. One such opening seems to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, however, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the