Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual journey to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular window manifests to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
