Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's actions and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid logic and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
