Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and revert to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
