Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell independence of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and return to feeling, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the