Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a broader war with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict reason and revert to feeling, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
