Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thought, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
