Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and beverages is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the discovery of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
