Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first 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 distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave 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 trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to other worlds. A particular window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between naivety and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
