Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to lead to different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible rationalism and return to feeling, however, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
