Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to 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 joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the finding of a set of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
