Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, her actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book opens with the unveiling of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that look to open into other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
