Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that look to open into other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
