Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the institution's dominium. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the discovery of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
