Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next 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 restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, her movements and her destiny are shown to be deeply woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell autonomy of thinking, innovation and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. A particular portal seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
