Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the destiny of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: windows that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such window appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
