Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from strict reason and return to feeling, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
