Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict reason and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
