Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal journey to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader conflict with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid logic and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the