Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's control. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her path are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her private mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. One such opening appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these portals as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from strict rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
