Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are taken and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, her movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a broader war with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
