Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary conflict in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
