Tings are unraveling 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 unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
