Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, her choices and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, creativity and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. One such opening seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
