Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried young Lyra to security along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to the city to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's air: portals that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
