Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final 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 terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. One such portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
