Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. 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.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the original series, her actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a series of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
