Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
