Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the church's rule. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, her movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to quell independence of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the planet's air: windows that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
