Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her private quest to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
