Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and drinks is sipped, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
