Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger battle with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle independence of reason, innovation and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story begins with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its head, classifies these portals as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
