Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling 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 states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to find out more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial product, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular portal seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
