Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply linked with the future of the world. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular opening appears to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict reason and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
