Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a larger conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
