Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, her choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a set of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways 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 the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
