Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's control. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a broader battle with an oppressive government which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
