Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh influence to broaden the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal journey to reunite with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider war with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
