Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
