Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by some as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her private mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell independence of reason, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
