Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to suppress independence of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the unveiling of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
