Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a collection of curious cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
