Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the fate of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a broader conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to quell independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book opens with the discovery of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
