Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to extend the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. One such window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible reason and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
