Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a series of curious openings in the fabric of the world's air: portals that appear to lead to alternate realities. An example of a window appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
