Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the religion's control. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial good, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, her movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the discovery of a collection of curious cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that look to lead to other worlds. A particular window seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a problem to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
