Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private mission to reconnect with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the unveiling of a set of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. One such window seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
