Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her movements and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the discovery of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the world's air: gateways that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
