Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to security along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict logic and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
