Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the unveiling of a set of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
