Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's control. A key character, who carried young Lyra to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from strict reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
