Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a set of unusual openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to feeling, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
