Things are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to suppress independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book opens with the unveiling of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: gateways that look to lead to alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these openings as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
