Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and tea is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's air: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
