Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the religion's control. A key character, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the unveiling of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: gateways that appear to open into alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these portals as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid logic and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
