Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to stifle freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to open into different dimensions. A particular window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between purity and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
