Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable good, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the world's sky: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible reason and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
