Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound power to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a set of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's air: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
