Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's air: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid logic and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the