Tings are falling apart 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 energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress independence of reason, creativity and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the discovery of a set of strange openings in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
