Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of reason, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the world's sky: portals that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a portal appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
