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Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and giving way."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm

In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The novel opens with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and back to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is prepared.

Story Tempo and Character Development

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