Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are caught and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the planet's sky: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
