Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's rule. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that appear to open into different dimensions. A particular opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict reason and return to instinct, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic tussle between naivety and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
