Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – 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 pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The oil is regarded by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the world's air: portals that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such opening seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
