Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to extend the church's rule. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
