Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's rule. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
