Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book begins with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: portals that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
