Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and determined heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the church's control. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. One such opening seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
