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Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.

As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world

In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The book opens with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the