Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the religion's rule. A key character, who carried young Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to open into other worlds. One such window manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict rationalism and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
