Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring 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". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to expand the institution's control. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's air: windows that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
