Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing 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 faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: windows that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
