Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to extend the church's rule. A key character, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to learn more about his plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
