Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces 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. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his newfound authority to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
