Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
