Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to broaden the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive system which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of strange openings in the structure of the world's air: gateways that look to lead to alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
