Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the world's air: windows that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
