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Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and failing."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

Pan's decision to go off in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the universe

In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The novel starts with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to lead to alternate realities. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is set.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

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