Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the institution's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, Lyra's choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
