Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial product, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the discovery of a series of strange openings in the structure of the planet's air: windows that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a challenge to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
