Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to security along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
