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Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to go off in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the world

In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider war with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The novel begins with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that seem to give on to different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.

Plot Rhythm and Character Development

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