Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the skies are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the finding of a series of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's air: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. One such opening appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and return to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
