Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the institution's dominium. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. One such window manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
