Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh authority to extend the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her private mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that seem to open into other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
