Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible reason and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
