Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
