Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the church's rule. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle independence of reason, innovation and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
