Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the planet's air: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
