Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who carried young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window seems to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
