Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the finding of a collection of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from strict reason and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
