Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to open into different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
