Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds 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, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. A particular window appears to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
