Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are ridden and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the finding of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to feeling, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
