Things are falling apart in the concluding book 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 tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular opening appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
