Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and determined heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the world's sky: gateways that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
