Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in quest of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her individual journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
