Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, her movements and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to stifle freedom of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's sky: gateways that look to open into other worlds. A particular window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
