Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh influence to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader battle with an oppressive government which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to suppress freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the structure of the world's sky: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict rationalism and return to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
