Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst 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 her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the church's rule. A key character, who carried young Lyra to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and recover her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems always have, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, creativity and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book begins with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible rationalism and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
