Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's rule. A key character, who carried young Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
