Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to suppress independence of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
