Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a tradeable product, by others as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
