Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid reason and return to instinct, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
