Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and tea is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, her actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the planet's air: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid reason and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
