Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's control. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that seem to lead to alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
