Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems in some way to be the source of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, Lyra's choices and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular window manifests to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict reason and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
