Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the finding of a set of curious fissures in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such window manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
