Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel 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". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's control. A key character, who carried young the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the original series, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her private quest to reunite with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key conflict in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, originality and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. One such portal seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the church's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to instinct, yet, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
