Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved young the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the key conflict in a larger conflict with an controlling system which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the world's air: windows that look to open into different dimensions. A particular opening appears to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
