Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle freedom of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the planet's air: windows that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
