Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an controlling system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: portals that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
