Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to extend the religion's rule. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her private mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the discovery of a collection of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
