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Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle independence of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The novel begins with the finding of a series of curious openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict logic and return to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and maturity is set.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the