Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the original series, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a broader war with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of unusual fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from strict rationalism and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
