Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider war with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the discovery of a series of curious fissures in the structure of the world's air: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
