Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and determined heroine of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
