Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are taken and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to learn more about his plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to suppress independence of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the planet's air: portals that appear to lead to alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
