Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining 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 chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid 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 animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are ridden and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart 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 mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound power to extend the church's rule. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal journey to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a collection of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: portals that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such window seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
