Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who carried young the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by some as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell independence of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the finding of a set of curious openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. One such opening seems to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
