Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound power to extend the church's rule. A key character, who saved young the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a marketable product, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive system which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the finding of a collection of curious cracks in the makeup of the world's air: portals that appear to lead to alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
