Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
