Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a opening appears to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
