Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural wickedness – 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 office of head of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's control. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her individual quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the world's sky: windows that appear to open into other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
