Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, her movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's sky: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid logic and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
