Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
