Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the world's air: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
