Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is drunk, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution's dominium. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is striving to suppress independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the finding of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that look to open into alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and return to instinct, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
