Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and tea is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the church's control. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to open into other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
