Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the original series, her actions and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
