Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with 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, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are shown to be deeply woven with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the planet's air: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
