Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears somehow to be the source of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the planet's air: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
