Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, Lyra's movements and her destiny are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal journey to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
