Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's control. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The extract is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and revert to instinct, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
