Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, 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 amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, her choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the discovery of a series of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
