Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and drinks is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's rule. A key character, who carried young the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid reason and return to intuition, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
