Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the unveiling of a set of curious openings in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
