Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the original series, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the finding of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to other worlds. A particular opening appears to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, designates these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
