Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her split from her soul companion, 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 go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to broaden the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story begins with the discovery of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that appear to open into different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
