Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way vital – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
