Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an controlling system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
