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Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.

Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the future of the universe

In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider war with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that seem to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is prepared.

Story Tempo and Character Development

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