Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the church's rule. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to security along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and back to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between naivety and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
