Things are falling apart 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 slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to broaden the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict rationalism and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
