Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is drunk, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to find out more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to suppress independence of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the unveiling of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these portals as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible logic and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
