Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress freedom of reason, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book opens with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
