Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the world's air: portals that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid reason and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic conflict between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
