Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is regarded by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
