Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the institution's control. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a broader battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell independence of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
