Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and older academics 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 toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
