Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the structure of the world's sky: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
