🔗 Share this article

Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound power to extend the religion's control. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.

As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm

In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is set.

Plot Rhythm and Character Development

At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the