Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in search of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to security along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: portals that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to feeling, however, her belief that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
