Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. One such window appears to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict logic and return to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
