Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, her movements and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the structure of the world's sky: portals that appear to give on to different dimensions. A particular portal seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict reason and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow crucial – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
