Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: gateways that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
