Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh influence to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the finding of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
