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Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's control. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world

In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The story opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible reason and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.

Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth

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