Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
