Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. One such window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
