Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the church's control. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider war with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that look to open into other worlds. One such portal appears to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
