Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the key battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's sky: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. One such opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its head, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
