Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the church's control. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her private journey to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to suppress freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that seem to give on to other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
