Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and determined main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic conflict between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
