Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The substance is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict reason and back to intuition, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
