Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular window manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
