Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader war with an oppressive system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell independence of reason, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that look to lead to other worlds. One such window seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
