Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, Lyra's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is striving to suppress freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
