Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, her choices and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the finding of a set of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: gateways that look to open into different dimensions. A particular portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to feeling, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
