Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the discovery of a set of strange openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic conflict between naivety and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
