Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, 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 youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that look to give on to different dimensions. One such window appears to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
