Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh influence to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story starts with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that look to open into alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the