Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound influence to expand the church's rule. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to security along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell independence of thought, originality and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
