Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the church's rule. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to open into different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
