Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a larger conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
