Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell independence of thought, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to instinct, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
