Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, her actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an oppressive system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to quell independence of reason, innovation and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the unveiling of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the planet's air: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. One such opening seems to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict reason and return to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
