Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such window manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
