Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. A particular window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
