Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the church's rule. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is regarded by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's air: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible reason and return to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
