Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and tea is consumed, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and back to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
