Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell independence of thought, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the finding of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and return to feeling, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
