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Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and failing."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

Pan's decision to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

Like the first series, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The story opens with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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