Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's control. A key character, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her personal quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell independence of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
