Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and drinks is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular window seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
