Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book begins with the unveiling of a set of strange openings in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. One such window manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
