Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to intuition, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
