Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to instinct, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
