Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to the city to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the discovery of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to open into alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is mysteriously essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
