Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
