Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next 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 crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to learn more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
