Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the unveiling of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
