Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the religion's rule. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by some as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and recover her vision becomes the central conflict in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell independence of thought, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's air: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
