Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell independence of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
