Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound power to extend the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a series of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the