Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
