Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's control. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a opening appears to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
