Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the finding of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to open into alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
