Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her destiny are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that look to lead to other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
