Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these portals as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
