Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who saved young the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
