Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger 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 masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of strange openings in the structure of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from strict rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
