Tings are falling apart in the concluding book 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 tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her soul and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell independence of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
