Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to expand the religion's control. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and return to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
