Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the institution's dominium. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's sky: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
