Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. 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, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is striving to quell freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
