Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh authority to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which appears somehow to be the source of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, her actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress freedom of thought, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the finding of a set of curious openings in the structure of the world's air: portals that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such opening seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between naivety and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
