Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, originality and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the finding of a series of curious openings in the structure of the planet's sky: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. One such portal manifests to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and back to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
