Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new 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 flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography 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 external spirits, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual journey to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is striving to quell independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: portals that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
