Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell independence of reason, innovation and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the planet's air: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
