Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's control. A key character, who carried young Lyra to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell independence of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to give on to different dimensions. A particular window manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid reason and back to instinct, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
