Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thought, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
