Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict reason and back to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
