Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
