Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's sky: portals that appear to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
