Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second 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 failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", 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 solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
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 mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's air: windows that look to open into alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to instinct, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
