Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to security along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, her movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular window appears to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
