Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
