Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are taken and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the church's control. A key character, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems in some way to be the source of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
