Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the finding of a set of strange openings in the fabric of the world's sky: portals that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such window manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
