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Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a tradeable good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.

Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a wider war with an controlling system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell independence of thought, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The story opens with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is established.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

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