Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the church's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a larger conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a set of curious openings in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
