Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to broaden the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the finding of a series of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a window appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
