Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the fabric of the world's sky: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
