Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her movements and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid reason and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
