Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to the city to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such portal appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the