Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the religion's control. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of thinking, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to open into other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and back to feeling, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between naivety and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
