Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the skies are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a set of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that look to open into different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
