Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual journey to reunite with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the unveiling of a set of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to open into alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
