Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound power to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like the original series, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's air: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and return to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
