Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
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 resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in beast form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who carried young the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the world's sky: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
