Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's air: windows that seem to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
