Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: portals that look to lead to alternate realities. A particular portal seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
