Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are shown to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic tussle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
