Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh influence to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict logic and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
