Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's rule. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a tradeable good, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict logic and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
