Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, her choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: portals that appear to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from strict rationalism and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
