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Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.

Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm

In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The novel begins with the discovery of a set of strange openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is established.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

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