Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a collection of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
