Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who saved young the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, originality and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story starts with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. One such window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible rationalism and return to feeling, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
