Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her private quest to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
