Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the religion's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
