Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the finding of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular opening appears to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict logic and return to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
