Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is sipped, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that appear to open into different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to intuition, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
