Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, her actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to suppress freedom of reason, creativity and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's sky: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict rationalism and return to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
