Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels this final volume, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: gateways that appear to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from strict reason and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
