Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, her actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the world's sky: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and return to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
