Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal seems to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and return to feeling, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
