Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating 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 picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's control. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow vital – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
