Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh influence to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, creativity and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the world's sky: windows that look to lead to other worlds. A particular window appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
