Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the church's control. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to security along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
