Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from strict logic and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
