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Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's rule. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's actions and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The book starts with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's air: gateways that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular opening appears to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict logic and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is set.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the