Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is sipped, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the church's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the discovery of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
