Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the discovery of a series of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic conflict between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the