Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's rule. A key character, who carried young the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her soul and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the world's air: portals that appear to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and return to intuition, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic tussle between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
