Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such window manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
