Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's control. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
