Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
