Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to extend the institution's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by various factions as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key conflict in a broader battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
