Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the future of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that appear to lead to alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict reason and return to feeling, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
