Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who carried young Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable product, by others as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such window appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
