Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is sipped, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the world's sky: gateways that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
