Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the source of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
