Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who saved young the heroine to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable product, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of thinking, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
