Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of unusual fissures in the structure of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. One such opening appears to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic tussle between innocence and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
