Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are caught and tea is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening appears to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
