Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by some as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
