Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to alternate realities. A particular window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
