Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's control. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by others as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the world. Her personal mission to reconnect with her soul and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a wider war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
