Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and determined heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to expand the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by some as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: windows that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a window appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
