Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's air: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a window appears to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
