Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound power to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these portals as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
