Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original 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 sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, her choices and her path are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's air: portals that appear to lead to different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
