Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged professors 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 infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, her movements and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a broader war with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, innovation and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the planet's sky: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. One such window appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
