Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
