Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, 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 collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible 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 expand the institution's dominium. A key character, who carried young the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the original series, her actions and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an oppressive government which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the