Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
