Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the church's control. A key character, who saved young Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the original series, her choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell independence of reason, creativity and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book opens with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and back to feeling, however, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
