Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an oppressive system which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
