Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its head, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and return to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
