Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
