Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key struggle in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic tussle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
