Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in animal form; where the skies are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the original series, her actions and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the destiny of the realm. Her individual journey to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
