Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story starts with the finding of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
