Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a broader conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that appear to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
