Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider war with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such portal appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
