Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
