Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to extend the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible logic and back to intuition, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
