Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to extend the institution's control. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
