Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are taken and tea is consumed, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
