Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again 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 clearly the sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by others as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the structure of the world's sky: windows that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
