Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a series of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. One such portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
