Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her individual mission to reconnect with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that look to open into different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
