Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound power to extend the institution's control. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, her movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
