Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are taken and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
