Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound influence to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
