Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), 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 Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the finding of a set of curious fissures in the structure of the world's air: portals that look to open into other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
