Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "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 scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
