Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic tussle between innocence and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
