Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are taken and drinks is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the finding of a set of strange openings in the structure of the planet's air: windows that seem to open into other worlds. One such window seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
