Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to suppress independence of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the planet's air: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. One such window seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible reason and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
