Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, buses are ridden and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh authority to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of thought, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a window appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
