Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in search of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the religion's control. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
