Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her private mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, originality and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
