🔗 Share this article

Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods 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 La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried young the heroine to security along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The story starts with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's air: portals that look to lead to other worlds. A particular opening appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously essential – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

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