Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to security along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The oil is seen by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that appear to open into other worlds. One such portal appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
