Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the air are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the church's control. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the future of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
