Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the church's rule. A key character, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
