Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, creativity and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the world's air: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
