Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying 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 chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk 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 embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the original series, her movements and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a series of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
