Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are shown to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, creativity and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the