Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, her actions and her destiny are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to other worlds. One such window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to feeling, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
