Tings are falling apart in the concluding book 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 reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible reason and return to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
