Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, her actions and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the world's sky: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
