Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her private mission to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story starts with the finding of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's sky: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
