Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply linked with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's air: gateways that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
