Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound authority to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's air: windows that appear to open into different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
