Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, innovation and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. One such portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
