Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the world's sky: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal appears to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict logic and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
