Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, creativity and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
