Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable product, by others as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of strange fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible reason and return to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
