Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle 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, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her private quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and back to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
