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Things are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

Pan's decision to go off in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The novel starts with the finding of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that appear to give on to different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict rationalism and return to intuition, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between naivety and experience is set.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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