Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh influence to broaden the religion's rule. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child 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 plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the discovery of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
