Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a set of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and return to instinct, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
