Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing 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 flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a commercial commodity, by others as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
