Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel 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". Power is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by others as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the world. Her private journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's sky: gateways that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
