Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply woven with the destiny of the world. Her private mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such opening seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
