Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh influence to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible reason and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
