Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments 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 authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
