Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. One such opening appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to instinct, yet, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
