Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh influence to broaden the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, originality and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
