Tings are collapsing 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 intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an controlling government which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the discovery of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: portals that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
