Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the fabric of the planet's air: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
