Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the original series, Lyra's actions and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the key conflict in a broader battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict reason and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
