Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the church's rule. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her individual mission to reconnect with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an oppressive system which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a set of strange openings in the fabric of the world's sky: portals that appear to open into other worlds. One such opening appears to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
