Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring 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". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in search of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of reason, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that look to lead to alternate realities. One such opening appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
