Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the planet's air: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
