Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that look to open into different dimensions. One such window seems to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict reason and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
