Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to suppress freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a collection of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such window seems to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict reason and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
