Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The oil is regarded by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress freedom of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. A particular opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
