Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to quell independence of reason, innovation and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
