Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something 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 concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial product, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a broader battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: windows that appear to lead to alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
