Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
