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Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a broader battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell autonomy of thinking, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular window manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and experience is set.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

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