Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and tea is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's control. A key character, who carried young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell independence of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: portals that appear to lead to different dimensions. One such portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
