Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
