Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider war with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell independence of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the world's air: windows that seem to open into other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
