Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into different dimensions. One such window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, designates these portals as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
