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Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, transports are taken and tea is sipped, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

Pan's decision to leave in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe

In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The book begins with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is set.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the