Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. 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 set on using his newfound power to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by others as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the discovery of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
