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Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

Similar to the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, Lyra's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the realm. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The novel begins with the unveiling of a set of curious openings in the makeup of the world's sky: portals that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such opening seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

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