🔗 Share this article

Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the institution's control. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.

Similar to the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The story starts with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: portals that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and return to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between purity and maturity is established.

Story Tempo and Character Development

At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the