Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to reconnect with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's sky: portals that appear to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, designates these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
