Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels this final volume, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's control. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of thinking, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the world's air: gateways that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
