Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something 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 last excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a social and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. One such window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict reason and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
