Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her soul and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
