Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the discovery of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's sky: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
